infryq

Over the weekend I finished the second pocket on the wool pants for P, and they are complete for now. I cut out some seersucker sleep shorts (it required some piecing so I gave them a side panel with a small diagonal stripe of doubled up black voile) and sewed all the panel seams and then the center front and back. We went to the farmers market and got three kinds of apples, maple syrup, mushrooms, a new cider (still, bittered with tulsi), beans, sweet potatoes, a pie pumpkin, peppers, a tomato, and fresh onions. Had some of the cider with dinner prep and it was intense; P doesn’t not-like it but it has enough dill seed overtones that my palate immediately labels it as an inferior pickle shot. Bummer.

I had a call with my Olin mentee, and one with my GoS mentee. For the latter we resubmitted her paper to JEI, her first time responding to reviewer feedback, milestone reached!

I’ve been watching The Magicians, which is fine, and reading Not Your Average Hot Guy, which is clearly trying very hard.

This week at work we reviewed everyone’s goals for fall. A fixed the convex solver for the day-of-week adjustments for the doctor visits signal, but we haven’t figured out how to install it yet with M still away at her internship. One of our cases and deaths providers changed the URL of their dataset without telling us, and made it so that pandas requests got routed to 403:Forbidden, which was annoying. It did give us the chance to start archiving the raw data files though, so, silver linings. I met with a pile of folks from Amazon to start the process of seeing if Redshift will be a good choice for us. I pair programmed with G for a couple hours and together we developed the SQL syntax for some of the queries the API server will need to run on the interim system. Next is figuring out how to make the existing query builder generate that syntax, which could be tricky. I got A started writing a new indicator to track vaccination data published by the CDC. I led the all-hands meeting, which was short since we didn’t have a Big Picture talk scheduled.

In the kitchen this week the best news is that I opened the white grits I ordered from Anson Mills and, wow. The texture is irregular and amazing, creamy but gently toothsome. Fantastic in chili. Doesn’t take as long to cook as they claim, either, though that may be because I prep a container with the grits in it that also contains damp ingredients like diced nectarine and green beans and tomatillos, so it has a chance to hydrate a bit before cooking. Second best is that if you par-cook brown rice using the pasta method on the same day you make soup, you can use the drained-off starchy rice liquid in the soup, and it’s a very good idea indeed.

The new desk is excellent and lets me sit in way more different positions than before. It is commensurately less sturdy though, so my second monitor bobbles when I jog the table. I can live with that though.

I’ve been watching the new season of Wynonna Earp. There’s gore, but it’s largely avoidable and there’s plenty of comic relief. Relationship drama may cause a mild allergic reaction but it looks like a lot of it is going to resolve soon.

P has been doing better on the new meds, but still in it.

Weather hot and humid. We’ve both been spending most of our time in the AC.

Some creature ripped up a bunch of the staples holding the garden fence in place, and had a party with their whole family, so there’s not much left of the garden. The squash has one leader left so is likely to recover, but the beans and kale won’t. The cucumber vines are still small and largely escaped the carnage, some flowers but no fruits yet. Wellp. It was a good run.

Been a bit.

This past week at work was largely about reviewing progress on our summer goals, many of which are behind, but July turned out to be a wretched month for surprises. Food-wise I’ve been leaning on meal bars for snacks more often (GoMacro, coconut chocolate chip), but my weight is stable so it doesn’t seem to be doing any harm. I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass and have some intense thoughts about it I’ll write up later. For now though, just a CN for suic*de; that was a surprise. Still working through Expanse. I went out to the garden while lunch cooked more often than not, to pick beans, water, move the hose around, and keep an eye on the tromboncini. We’ve started doing the bee puzzle in the crossword app as a warmup, and yesterday’s pangram was quite good. The White is fully back in its cabinet and runs acceptably enough for sewing. The sticky spot in the mechanism can cause an alarming vibration at some speeds but nothing life-threatening. We’ve ordered a desk for me to work at so I can move the cabinet back into the sewing room where it belongs.

I’ve got the coming week off, which was slightly overdue as I’ve been pretty exhausted. Looking forward to the rest and altered focus.

Yesterday we went to a picnic for my research group! It was the first time I’d met almost everybody in person, held at a gorgeous event area at one of the new loft spaces on the south side. Mostly outdoors, well-ventilated, high-ceilinged indoors, and all the adults were of course vaccinated because epidemiologists don’t mess around. A bunch of the Fellows were able to make it and it was grand to get a chance to catch up. C and R brought their dogs and I got some quality happy animal time. R took some candid photos and one posed. R made an informal speech based on a mildly patriarchal quote which I then modified to my favorite “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, bring people with you”; very in-character for our dynamic. Had a lovely time and left before getting overwhelmed.

Spent the next couple hours decompressing with a delightful perspective-bending game called Gorogoa and texting with A. Did the normal weekly laundry and hung it out on the line. Had a snack, watched more Expanse. Dinner, brought in the clothes, crossword, finished Gorogoa, snack, sleep. Dreamt of preparing for some kind of research competition a la science olympiad but for grad students; chocolate; pro-level hide and seek; peeking through the keyholes in the doors on the second floor of my grandparents’ house.

Yesterday I fixed some blown signal titles in the meta sheet, worked through some tricky staffing discussions with R&R, heard K and V give their final presentation of their data analysis project on identifying leading indicators and using them to predict cases and deaths rises (which was stellar, very proud of K), lead a team leads discussion on what we should track when using the new API key scheme and how to reduce the impact on casual users, then had most of my Friday 1:1s since I’m off today. Solid productive work day.

I cleaned up early and spent some quality time in the garden, clearing the paths of comfrey and lemon balm and arugula. I spread some more alfalfa meal everywhere leaves and stems matter. The beans are starting to produce in earnest. The squash is growing bold.

Dinner, crossword (cute trick), Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of a vacation at some kind of large inland lake; a cabin, a freeway system, a row of open-air eateries on a pier, clear water, pebbled shore.

Tooth And Claw continues well, if a bit heavy on the allegorical “these experiences will redeem you Or Else”.

Yesterday I ran the production systems meeting and the data scaling meeting, lurked in an ad-hoc team leads meeting about whether to stop publishing weekly forecasts for a bit while we adjust to the changing data landscape (cases and deaths reporting has rapidly been decreasing in quality), and assembled a shift in how we’re using one of the columns of the metadata sheet. I also wrote up the shortlist for the research programmer position to send to R&R.

I did a turn through the garden at lunch and tied up the squash again, gave the cucumbers some more air, and watered the beans a bit.

I’ve been having trouble stopping work on time, instead getting repeatedly distracted by one more thing.

Dinner, crossword, Expanse, direct to sleep as it was late. Dreamt of the sort of transformative feel-good coming-of-age detention you only get in fiction. And soft friendly birds that liked to be held.

I started reading Fringe Runner by Rachel Aukes, an antiestablishment space activism story with problematic elements. The refreshing bit is an ablist world, anti-ablist author; the depressing one is misogynist world, thus-far misogynist author. There’s also a tiresome obsession with secret societies that takes itself way too seriously but also has dismal infosec policy. The plot is reasonable though so we’ll see if it redeems itself.

Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got peaches, apricots, blueberries, melomacarona, mushrooms, eggplant, beans, broccolini, cilantro, basil, tomatoes, and onions. After lunch we did the crossword, and we did the laundry and hung it out on the line. I worked on some mending and started reading Dangerous To Know by KT Davies, an irreverent bit of roguelike D&D theater with eclectic cultural heritage. The villains are pretty tinny but the two main characters have substantial depth. Snack, Expanse, dinner, pulled in the clothes, scrabble (604, scored 66 with JERKED), more Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of art school problem-solving, a complicated leaf table, offering crash space, and some kind of game with a weird cooking mechanic.

Yesterday we released the new sheet-based metadata system, and I put all my remaining free time into the process mapping report. The API struggled with performance issues all day, going back to 1AM so we know it wasn’t the metadata release. The fix we tried resolved the one error we were able to find, but not alas the performance problems. I met briefly with J to go over the edits requested by the journal reviewers and talk about a documentation project some of the girls want to help out with, then called it good.

P made a telemedicine appointment for this afternoon, but was otherwise feeling much better except for a low fever in the evening. I let B know we may have to cancel dinner plans Saturday.

Dinner, crossword, Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of hotels, food shopping with friends, bus routes, trying to see a play but being unable to remember the PIN to any of my cards, a VR game about planning a wedding in a bizarre sortof frontier context.

Yesterday I finished drafting a project proposal for the MSE capstone, and sent it to R&R for revisions. I held the production systems meeting and the data scaling meeting, and updated R on the database hiring situation. I finished up the day by submitting performance eval goals to HR; it’s a new thing they’re doing as part of the effort to reduce bias and improve equity. I approve in general, but wow if the goal editing tool isn’t a mess.

Dinner included cracking open a bottle of the wild ferment from F, and it is way different from all her other stuff — thick and sweet, with a delicate tingle and compelling verticality. Not for quaffing, excellent sipping from small cups.

I finished Paladin’s Grace and am rather upset that the next one just came out and isn’t available by audio yet.

Same with I Am Not Okay With This. Cmon.

Dreamt of carpools, military skirmishes, trans friends, white people behaving badly, sidewalks turned into foot races, writing essays longhand

Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got mushrooms, broccolini, tomatoes, basil, parsley, cilantro, zucchini, callaloo, beans, celery, blueberries, apricots, and peaches. P got oxtail for lunch from the Jamaican place, and I arranged for case drop off today with the cider folks. Lunch, put in a forgotten load of laundry, crossword, then reading and mending until dinner. I’ve been struggling a bit with portion sizes and time, so skipped snack and cut back and had a much better after dinner experience. Scrabble (592), then started watching I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix. It’s a modern YA story about grief and rage and exclusion and coming out to yourself, told under the conceit of Matilda-like emotion-borne telekinesis. Based on comics. Recommended.

Changed my mind. The reader for Paladin’s Grace is a perfect foil for the angst and fluff of the character relationships. His dialogue voices are 💯.